LIGHT THE FIRES; Everything you need to know as NHRA prepares for blastoff.(NEWS)

Byline: ROB GEIGER

AFTER FIVE YEARS OF TONY Schumacher dominating Top Fuel, the category's all-time leader in championships (six, the past five of them in a row) and national-event wins (56) will be seriously tested in 2009, and his main rival will be a very familiar person when the season opens in Pomona, Calif., Feb. 5-8.

Crew chief Alan Johnson, who tuned Schumacher to virtually every record in the books over the past five-plus seasons, left the U.S. Army team in November to start his own operation, funded by the sheikh of Qatar. Johnson was able to coax two-time Top Fuel champ Larry Dixon away from Don "The Snake Prudhomme's team, giving him the second-most-successful active Top Fuel pilot on his roster. Dixon has 43 wins and counting.

Certainly, Johnson will want to prove that it was his tune-up that produced all those happy times in Schumacher's camp, and although he's turning over day-to-day crew-chief duties to Jason McCulloch, he'll still be a large part of the race-day equation.

Early indications point to a great battle between Schumacher and Dixon. In preseason testing, the two topped the charts, separated by just 0.001 second.

The class will feature two NHRA rookies: Spencer Massey and Shawn Langdon. Massey fills Dixon's seat at Snake Racing after winning the IHRA title last year, while Langdon is coming off back-to-back world titles in Super Comp. They'll fight for rookie-of-the-year honors with Funny Car ...